PERSONS JULY 2014

PERSONS JULY 2014

• TV GOPALAKRISHNAN: Eminent Carnatic musician and acclaimed mridangam exponent T V Gopalakrishnan has been chosen for the Sangita Kalanidhi award of the Music Academy for 2014.
  
• SANGITHA KALANIDHI AWARD
  Sangeetha Kalanidhi or Sangita Kalanidhi s the title awarded yearly to an expert Carnatic Musician by the Madras Music Academy. This honour is considered one of the highest awards in Carnatic music. The youngest female awardee of the Sangita Kalanidhi award is M. L. Vasanthakumari at age of 49 years
  
• SMITA GUPTA: Smita Gupta has been selected for the prestigious Prem Bhatia Award for political reporting. The Prem Bhatia Awards, instituted in the memory of one of the most eminent journalists of his era, have gone this year to two “exceptional journalists” for their reporting on politics, and environment and development issues, respectively.
  While Ms. Gupta has been selected for “her excellent reporting and analysis of the major political parties in India,” the award for excellence in environmental and development reporting has gone to Nitin Sethi, for his reporting on key environmental and development topics.
  
• DURGA PRASAD: Durga Prasad has been elected as President for the Institute of Cost Accountants of India for the year 2014-15. He is currently Managing Director and CEO of a Business Process Management company and Director of a boutique investment banking company.
  The Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICAI) was first formed as a registered limited company in the year 1944 as per the provisions of the then companies Act, 1913 with the initial objective of promoting, regulating and developing the profession of Cost Accountancy. Post Independence, the institute got statutory recognition when the Parliament of India enacted "The Cost and Works Accountants Act" (Act No.23rd of 1959), a special act, on May 28, 1959 to accord statutory recognition to ICAI (then ICWAI) as an autonomous professional Institute with the objectives of promoting, regulating, and developing the profession of Cost and Management Accountancy
  
• SUNDARAM SANKARAN:Sundaram Sankaran, a former World Bank official and a well known journalist, has passed away. Having served the World Bank for over 25 years in Washington D.C., Sankaran, played an important role in shaping the Bank’s information policy in developing countries. He retired in 1988 as Chief of the Bank’s Public Affairs Division.
  Sankaran began his journalistic career with the Press Trust of India (PTI) in 1950 and then worked forThe Statesman in Mumbai. In his eight-year stint with the newspaper he had covered important developments including the ‘Samyuktha Maharashtra agitation’ for the bifurcation of the then Bombay Presidency.
  
• Governors appointed

  State	Governor
  Gujarat	Om Prakash Kohli
  Uttar Pradesh	Ram Naik
  West Bengal	Kesri Nath Tripathi
  Chhattisgarh	Balramji Dass Tandon
  Nagaland	Padmanabha Acharya

  
  About the Governor Institution
  The Governor of the States of India is appointed by the President of India for a period of five years. A Governor is appointed on the advice of the Union Council of Ministers, or in reality on the advice of the Prime Minister. For the President to consult the Chief Minister of the concerned state, before the appointment of a Governor is not a constitutional requirement. A Governor may be simultaneously assignee to more than one state. Thus on many occasions 
  • A Governor is appointed for a period of 5 years. The President, if he so pleases may extend his tenure. A vacancy in the Governor’s post arises, if
  • The Governors also have often been transferred from one state to another.
  • The constitution does not specify grounds on which the Governors may be dismissed. Evidently Governors may be dismissed for gross misbehaviour. But often Governors have been dismissed to suit the conveniences of Government at the centre.
  
  
• Nadine Gordimer: Gordimer, who won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, died on July 13th
  
• Prasad Bhatt: Environmentalist and social activist Chandi Prasad Bhatt was presented the Gandhi Peace Prize by President Pranab Mukherjee on 15th July. Bhatt has got this award for his dedicated, tireless and invaluable work for the conservation of the environment. A Gandhian and a member of the Sarvodaya movement, Mr. Bhatt organised the Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh in 1964. He dedicated himself through the Sangh to improve the lives of villagers, providing employment near their homes in forest-based industries, and fighting against wrong policies through Gandhian non-violent satyagraha. The International Gandhi Peace Prize,named after Mahatma Gandhi, is awarded annually by the Government of India. As a tribute to the ideals espoused by Gandhi, the Government of India launched the International Gandhi Peace Prize in 1995 on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi. This is an annual award given to individuals and institutions for their contributions towards social, economic and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods. The award carries Rs. 10 million in cash, convertible in any currency in the world, a plaque and a citation. It is open to all persons regardless of nationality, race, creed or sex.
  
• Shakira: International pop star Shakira is officially the most popular person on Facebook with over a 100 million ‘likes’, the most for any public figure.
  
• Bashar Al-Assad: Bashar al-Assad has been sworn in for a third term as Syria's president. With this he became the President for the third consecutive term. He was re-elected after a presidential election that was held in June 2014.
  
• Ashok Chavan: The Election Commission of India has issued notice to Ashok Chavan (Congress Praliamentarian and former Chief Minister of Maharashtra). The notice is for alleged failure to register his poll expenses during the 2009 poll.
  The EC order came on the complaint of former Maharashtra minister Madhavrao Kinhalkar, defeated by Chavan from Nanded in 2009, and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The complainants said Chavan had not included the expenditure for 25 advertisements in Marathi newspapers in his poll accounts.
  In the notice EC asked to Chavan to explain why he should not be disqualified under Section 10A of the Representation of the People Act in a case pertaining to ‘paid news.’
  
• Umlesh Yadav is the first politician to be disqualified by the Election Commission of India for a period of three years for suppression of her election expenses incurred when she was elected as an MLA to the Bisauli constituency in the Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections, 2007
  What is Representation of the people act?
  The Representation of People Act, 1951 is an act of Parliament of India to provide for the conduct of elections of the Houses of Parliament and to the House or Houses of the Legislature of each State, the qualifications and disqualifications for membership of those Houses, the corrupt practices and other offences at or in connection with such elections and the decision of doubts and disputes arising out of or in connection with such elections. The Act was enacted by the provisional parliament under Article 327 of Indian Constitution, before the first general election. The acts were amended several times, but one of the notable amendments is the Representation of the People (Amendment) Act, 1966 (47 of 1966), which abolished the election tribunals and transferred the election petitions to the high courts whose orders can be appealed to Supreme Court. However, election disputes regarding the election of President and Vice-President are directly heard by the Supreme Court.
  About Instructions:
  There are rules on how much candidates can spend on their campaigns and where they receive their funding from
  There are two types of spending by, or on behalf of, parties at elections. These are: 
  • party campaign spending
  • candidate spending
  In the 2014 elections candidates spending increased by Election Commission
  The expenditure limits for Lok Sabha elections increased from Rs 40 lakh to Rs 70 lakh in bigger states and from Rs 22 lakh to Rs 54 lakh in smaller states.
  The bigger states include Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka etc, and the smaller states include Goa and other hilly and north eastern states.
  The Government also cleared the proposal to raise expenditure limits for assembly elections, with a maximum of Rs 28 lakh and a minimum of Rs 20 lakh in North Eastern and hill states.
  
• Beniwal: Gujarat Governor Beniwal was transferred to Mizoram. Rajasthan governor Margaret Alva takes additional charge of Gujarat.
  
• Vakkom Purushothaman:Nagaland Governor Vakkom B. Purushothaman tendered his resignation. Purushothaman is the first politician-turned-governor to resign. All other governors who resigned recently were bureaucrats.
  CONTROVERSY
  • The removal of Governors began in 1977. When Janata Party came into power it started removing all the Governors appointed by Congress.
    
    The decision/recommendation of the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, and his Cabinet to dismiss Governors was sent back by then acting President B.D. Jatti Though the government managed to remove the Governors, as the acting President Jatti was constitutionally bound to sign the order when it was again sent back to him
    
    The practice of replacing the Governor by the newly elected Central government did not stop and different governments kept indulging in the practice. However the removal of Governors is also over ruling of a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, in May 2010 on the issue of the removal of the Governor of a State.
    
    The judgment emphasised that “The Governor cannot be removed on the ground that he is out of sync with the policies and ideologies of the Union government or the party in power at the Centre. Nor can he be removed on the ground that the Union government has lost confidence in him.” It is true that the same judgment also provided an exception that the government can initiate the process of removal of the Governor by first building a case file citing reasons for the removal of the Governor.
    
• New Judges to Supreme Court
  The Chief Justices of the Calcutta and Orissa High Courts, Arun Kumar Mishra and Adarsh Kumar Goel, and senior lawyer Rohinton Nariman were on 7th July sworn in as Supreme Court judges.
  
  Rohinton Nariman before being elevated as a judge, he practiced as a senior counsel at the Supreme Court. He was appointed the Solicitor General of India on 23 July 2011. Justice Goel, will be the first judge to represent Haryana in the court and will have a tenure of a little over five years. Justice Arun Mishra, from Madhya Pradesh will have a tenure of about seven years.
  Judges of Supreme Court used to be appointed by the President of India, who acted on the advice of the Union Cabinet. However, subsequent to the rulings in the Three Judges Cases (1982, 1993, 1998), the President is required to appoint judges who have been chosen by the Supreme Court's collegium — a closed group consisting of the Chief Justice of India and the four most senior associate judges of the court.
  The Union Cabinet and Parliament have almost no role to play in the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court or to any of India's twenty-four High Courts.
  The position of Chief Justice of India is attained on the basis of seniority amongst the judges serving on the court. The collegium system has come under a fair amount of criticism.
  Recent Developments
  Through 120th amendment of Constitution UPA Government introduced judicial appointments bill in Parliament, the important provisions are as follows:
  • The Constitution (120th Amendment) Bill, 2013 amends provisions related to appointment and transfer of judges to the higher judiciary.
  • It establishes a Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) to make recommendations to the President on appointment and transfer of judges to the higher judiciary. It empowers Parliament to pass a law providing for the composition, functions and procedures of the JAC.
  • The JAC Bill, 2013 states that the JAC shall comprise: (i) the Chief Justice of India (CJI), (ii) two other senior most judges of the Supreme Court (SC), (iii) the Union Minister for Law and Justice, and (iv) two eminent persons to be nominated by the Prime Minister, and the Leader of Opposition of the Lok Sabha.
  • The functions of the JAC include making recommendations for appointments of the CJI, SC judges, Chief Justice and other High Court (HC) judges, and transfer of HC judges.
    
• Dalbir Singh Suhag: Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag is the next Army Chief; Supreme Court of India has cleared his name.
  Ban was imposed on Suhag for alleged failure of “Command and Control” in an operation conducted by an intelligence unit working under Dimapur-based 3 corps commander, at that time headed by Suhag. However at present the court did not find the disciplinary ban imposed on Suhag. Hence SC cleared his name as next Chief.
  Controversy
  • The United Progressive Alliance government has appointed Suhag as the new Chief of Army, before completion of Elections.
  • Former Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh, who is present, Union Minister in Modi’s Cabinet, protested against the appointment of a new chief before the new government was formed.
  • V.K. Singh, days before his retirement in 2012, imposed a promotion ban on Dalbir Singh for a botched intelligence operation in the northeastern state of Assam. The ban was revoked by his successor, the current Army chief, Bikram Singh.
    
• Pinky Anand: Pinky Anand has been appointed Additional Solicitor-General in the Supreme Court. She is the second woman lawyer to be appointed in this position. The first is Indira Jaising. Additional Solicitor General (ASG) of India is not a constitutional position. ASG assists Solicitor General of India. Solicitor General of India assists Attorney General of India.
  Attorney General of India is constitutional position under article 76. Whereas posts of the Solicitor General and the Additional Solicitors General are statutory bodies
  • Attorney General of India is the first law Officer of the country
  • At present Attorney General of India-Mukul Rohtagi (14th AG of India)
  • At present Solicitor General of India – Ranjit Kumar
  • First Solicitor General of India – CK Daphtary
    
• Vohra Sehgal: Legendary actress Zohra Sehgal passed away on 10th June. She was the recipient of many awards including Padma Vibhushan.
  
• Suresh Prabhu: The Union government has appointed the former Cabinet Minister, Suresh Prabhu, as the head of a high-level panel on power revamp — “Advisory Group for Integrated Development of Power, Coal and Renewable Energy.” Mr. Prabhu will be assisted by three former bureaucrats — Pratyush Sinha, Anil Baijal and Partha Bhattacharya.
  
• HR Khan: The Government on 3rd July re-appointed Harun Rashid Khan as the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. The appointment has been made for two years with effect from July 4, 2014 or until further orders, whichever is earlier, RBI said.
  
• Pavan Pal Kaushal: Infrastructure lending company IDFC has appointed Pavan Pal Kaushal as Chief Risk Officer effective July 1.